Hong Kong, with the blue water of its harbour, the dark hills towering precipitously above the town, the walls of whose houses are gaily painted in bright colours, is one of the loveliest places on earth. After long days on board ship, where the eye tires of the interminable monotony of sea and sky, it seems doubly beautiful. And one marvels to find this English lodgment on the coast of China a city of stately buildings, of lofty clubs and many‐storied hotels, of magnificent offices and splendid shops, of well‐built barracks and princely villas. The town of Victoria—for Hong Kong, though used for it, is really the name of the island—stretches for miles along the water’s edge, being for the most part built on reclaimed ground; for the hills thrust themselves forward to the sea. Up their steep sides the houses clamber in tier upon tier until they end under the frowning face of a rocky precipice that reaches up to the summit. And there along its ridge, which is called the Peak, 1,800 feet above the sea, are more houses. Large hotels, villas, and barracks—for it is fast becoming the residential quarter for Europeans—are perched upon its narrow breadth, seemingly absolutely inaccessible from below. But a thin, almost perpendicular, line against the face of the hill shows how they are reached by a cable tramway, which, in ten minutes, brings its passengers from the steamy atmosphere of Victoria to the cool breezes of the Peak—another climate altogether. The city practically consists of one long street, which runs from end to end of the island and is several miles in length. On the steep landward side smaller streets run off at right angles and climb the hills, many of them in flights of steps. On the slopes above the town are one or two long roads parallel to the main street and consisting altogether of residential buildings, churches, convents, and schools.